NEWSPARENTS

Victory! Gov. John Kasich today reduced the charges against Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single African-American mother jailed and convicted of a felony earlier this year for enrolling her children in a school district in which she did not live.

The news comes after more than 184,000 Change.org members emailed Kasich’s office in support of Williams-Bolar since January of this year, when her conviction sparked a viral campaign on Change.org created by Massachusetts resident Caitlin Lord (read Lord's account of why she started the petition).

Alongside African-American citizen coalition ColorOfChange.org, Change.org members from around the country called Kasich’s office on Tuesday, September 6, urging him to pardon Williams-Bolar. Ohio’s Parole Board had recommended that Williams-Bolar not receive a reduction in sentencing.

This guest post comes from Darell Hammond, CEO of KaBOOM!, a national nonprofit dedicated to saving play for America's children.

This week, our Congress will be returning from their August recess--a yearly tradition that recognizes the human need to take a break from a grueling schedule and spend some time playing.

At the same time, as children across the country return to school, some will find that they have no recess at all. Others will find that their combined recess and lunch period is so short, they have to choose between food and play.

Play is under attack in our nation's schools--and shrinking recess periods are only part of the problem. Homework is increasing. Cities are building new schools without playgrounds. Safety concerns are prompting bans of tag, soccer, and even running on the schoolyard.

Despite countless studies proving that play is integral to children's learning and health, most kids aren't getting enough space and time to play during the school day. These seven absurd stories from last school year say it all:

Earlier this year, Kelley Williams-Bolar spent 9 days in jail because she sent her kids to a safer school district. Now, her future is in the hands of Ohio Governor John Kasich.

More than 180,000 Change.org members have signed a petition asking Governor Kasich to pardon Kelley, who chose to send her kids to a safer school in her father's neighboring district, instead of the neighborhood where she lived. Governor Kasich responded positively to the petition and international media coverage around the story, asking the Ohio Parole Board to hear Kelley's case.

But inexplicably, last Friday afternoon, the Parole Board recommended against pardoning Kelley. But it's not too late, because Governor Kasich can make his own decision to issue a full pardon.

Can you please take one minute today, Tuesday, September 6, to call Gov. John Kasich's office and ask that he issue a full pardon of Kelley Williams-Bolar?

In response to pressure from parents, educators and grassroots advocates, Scholastic Inc. will drastically limit its practice of partnering with corporations to produce classroom material, the company announced last week.

The publisher had been under fire since May, when it was forced to stop distributing a fourth-grade curriculum called “The United States of Energy” that had been paid for by the coal industry and distributed to classrooms across the country. Boston nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood had called on Scholastic to drop the curriculum, and after achieving success, expanded its campaign -- in concert with online social action platform Change.org -- to lobby for sweeping reforms to Scholastic’s controversial “InSchool Marketing” division.

[This guest post comes from Christine George, who has worked as a teacher in Virginina and Arizona. She has six children. --Eds]

I am a mom.  If you ask me who I am or what I do, that will always be my first answer, because “Mom” is my most important job.  I am also a Cub Scout volunteer and a former teacher and school administrator. But first and foremost, I am a mom of six wonderful boys ages one to eighteen.  Part of my job as their mother is to ensure their safety, security, health, and happiness.  So when I learn that a company that we, as parents and educators, have trusted for decades is willingly selling their impressionable little minds to the highest bidder, I get angry.  And so should you.

Scholastic is the world’s largest distributor and publisher of children’s books and an industry leader in educational technology and children’s media. Their corporate philosophy starts with “Kids love us, parents trust us, teachers depend on us...”  And they’re right, with good reason. Scholastic does a great deal to promote literacy and education worldwide.  They are the leading operator of school-based book fairs and clubs in the United States.  They provide books, magazines, reference materials, educational technology and curriculum materials to schools and libraries across the country.  Having been a teacher, I really do appreciate all they do to provide reading materials to students and schools alike.  As a result of the good work they do, they enjoy a unique position of trust in our schools.  But they are abusing that trust to surreptitiously influence the minds of our children.

More than 13,000 Change.org members have signed a petition telling Norwalk, Connecticut to drop charges against Tanya McDowell, a homeless woman who's being prosecuted for sending her son to the "wrong" school. But now, the people behind the petition are saying that dropping the charges against McDowell isn't enough - the prosecutor who brought the charges, Suzanne Vieux, should be fired.

Anthony Crisci, the Norwalk community organizer who started the petition, said initially, it wasn't clear where exactly the charges against McDowell - which he calls "senseless" - came from.

"We later found out that this action was orchestrated mainly by the State Attorney's office, and particularly by Assistant State's Attorney Suzanne Vieux," said Crisci. "We felt that Vieux's handling of the case was not only irrational, but an arrogant waste of taxpayers' dollars."

Jessica Kutch, Director of Economic Justice organizing at Change.org, says the lawyers and prosecutors she's talked to have been outraged by the case, with one even calling it "disgraceful." Tanya McDowell, a homeless mother, could face up to 20 years in jail and pay more than $16,000 for registering her son for kindergarten in Norwalk's school district, where they did not live, using her babysitter's address. Federal law requires public schools to enroll homeless students.

This just in! Ohio Gov. John Kasich has pledged to investigate the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar -- an important step forward for the more than 80,000 who have signed the Change.org petition urging him to pardon Williams-Bolar.

Earlier today, Kasich announced that his legal team is meeting with Williams-Bolar's attorney, prosecutor and the Copley-Fairlawn school district. "Our laws exist for a reason and they must be enforced, but the idea that a woman would become a convicted felon for wanting a better future for her children is something that has rightly raised a lot of concern with people, including me.”

The entire statement, posted on his website, also includes: “Karen and I work hard to make a better future for our girls so when I first heard about Ms. Kelley Williams-Bolar’s case last week it really struck me, as it has many other people.  My legal team has been reviewing it in detail and is in the process of talking to her lawyer, the prosecutor and the school district, in order to provide me a complete briefing."

Hip-hop mogul P Diddy is urging Ohio Governor John Kasich to pardon Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Akron mom jailed for sending her daughters to a safer school.

Tweeting from @iamdiddy to more than 3.2 million followers, he wrote: "MAKE #KELLEYWILLIAMSBOLAR a TT! I want all 3M of yall 2 hit up @johnkasich and tell him Moms shouldnt go to jail for protecting their kids!"

Earlier, he also tweeted a link to the Change.org petition to Gov. Kasich asking for a full pardon for Williams-Bolar, which has received over 68,000 signatures to date.

Williams-Bolar is the Akron, Ohio woman convicted of a felony for sending her children to school in a safer school district. Sentenced for falsifying residency documents, the felony conviction may ruin her career. Just classes away from a teaching degree, Williams-Bolar will not be able to work as a teacher if the conviction remains on her record.

As we've covered on Change.org, Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in jail, three years of probation and 80 hours of community service for allegedly falsifying residency documents so that her two daughters could attend school in Copley, Ohio, the nearby suburb where her father lives. Williams-Bolar maintains that she was frightened for her daughters' safety and that the girls split their time between her home in Akron public housing and their grandfather's home in Copley.

Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Akron, Ohio mom slammed with a felony conviction for sending her children to a suburban school district, got out of jail yesterday after serving 9 days of her 10-day sentence.

Today, she visited Change.org and was overjoyed by what she saw there, a family spokesman told us today. She took courage from the tens of thousands of people who have signed the Change.org petition on her behalf, said Rev. Bruce Butcher, an Akron minister working with the family.

"She expressed joy for what she'd seen," Butcher told us today. "She expressed joy in the support she's seeing online. We appreciate what you're doing and we appreciate the support."

As of this writing, more than 36,000 people have sent messages to Ohio Gov. John Kasich in support of Williams-Bolar. The mom of two argued in court that she was trying to keep her daughters safe from the violence in her Akron neighborhood. But because she allegedly falsified residency documents to send her daughters to school in the district where her father lived, she was sentenced to 10 days in jail, three years of probation and 80 hours of community service.

For trying to give her daughters a better life, Williams-Bolar went to jail. Here are three ways to help Williams-Bolar fight this conviction:

During his campaign, Ohio Governor John Kasich pledged to bring jobs into the state and help heal Ohio's distressed economy.

How will he handle the situation of Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Akron woman who wanted the best for her children but is now in jail and may be prevented from having a job? More than 11,000 Change.org members hope he'll do the right thing.

Thousands of people across the country have asked Gov. Kasich to pardon Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Akron, Ohio woman sentenced for sending her daughters to school in a district where they did not have residency.

Williams-Bolar was jailed, given 80 hours of community service and slammed with three years of probation after she was convicted of falsifying residency records so that her two daughters could go to school in nearby Copley, Ohio, where her father lived. Williams-Bolar, an African-American single mother, lived in public housing in Akron.